Fred Armisen receiving the 2025 Ernie Kovacs Award. Photo by Victoria Hernandez.
This year’s Ernie Kovacs Award recipient Fred Armisen joined a Q&A session Saturday night at the Texas Theatre.
The Dallas VideoFest Kovacs award was founded in 1997 to honor Ernie Kovacs, a king of early television comedy in the 1950s and early 1960s. This year’s rendition was hosted by Bart Weiss, artistic director of the Video Association of Dallas.
Armisen is a comedian, writer, producer and musician with over two decades of experience in the entertainment industry. He is known as the third-longest cast member of Saturday Night Live where he brought a multitude of characters to life. Other well-known works include his latest role as Uncle Fester in Wednesday and his work on Portlandia and Documentary Now.
Prior to the Q&A with Weiss, a reel was played several of Armisen’s appearances throughout his career.
“It’s really amazing to see it all at once because I never thought when I started doing stuff, it would become all of that,” he said. “But I really appreciate it.”
Armisen “officially” started the conversation with a nod to our city.
“I’ve been to Dallas a lot … I’ve done a few shows here in this theater and it’s all been great,” he said. “And there’s something about Dallas, too, it’s sort of like the actual cool city.”
He did a shoutout to one of his favorite bands Def Rain originating from here and said he wanted to start the evening off with a thank you as he was “looking forward to being in Dallas.”
Sticking on the Texas topic, Armisen shared he first started doing television because of Austin’s South by Southwest (SXSW) in the early ’90s with “fake” interviews.
“Although by then it was starting to pick up steam as a real entity,” he said. “And then from that video I was doing music stuff all the time, but sort of, for lack of a better word, unsuccessfully.”
Having played the drums since he was a kid, Armisen has now toured across the country with several bands, including in the band for the Blue Man Group and The B-52s. These gigs are not taken lightly, as he said he purposefully doesn’t make the opportunity fun comparing his preparation and performance to that of a soldier.
“I was like, ‘this is not my time to shine,’” he said in regard to his time touring with DEVO. “It was like, let me deliver for these guys and leave it.”
His latest music venture includes his recent release of 100 Sound Effects, everything from fake booing to smashing bottles.
When it came back to his comedy, he gave an inside look into the influence cast members have at SNL.
“I mean you have to write it yourself,” he said. “And sometimes you get lucky if someone will write something for you, but a lot of the time you’re sort of making your own way and it’s not as easy.”
He highlighted the importance of not only creating a character for himself, but the care it took to make sure characters were in harmony with other cast members. Sometimes characters thrived whereas others were throwaways, but later made a surprise return.
“It’s kind of nice for those surprises to happen,” he said. “ And it’s really fun to watch it happen to other cast members while you’re on the show. You watch them sort of develop these characters and then all of a sudden, you know, you got Debbie Downer.”
The Debbie Downer fictional character was created by Rachel Dratch. Armisen also made a call out to other SNL moments, naming Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader as two of the folks he remembers doing bits with fondly. Although, he added that favorites often change.
As for upcoming works, Armisen said he is filming for a TV show in Chicago in December and will continue his role on Wednesday early in the new year, adding that “just all kinds of stuff” are in the works in terms of touring and stand-up as well.
